Snow foam won't get rid of water marks Li. But it does loosen up a lot of gunk before a wash. CD was caked in stubborn sticky tree sap this morning, and snowfoam and a wash removed it all a treat. the best way to avoid watermarks is not to wash in sunlight, and dry the car very quickly after rinsing.

Pre wax cleansers such as the Dod Juice Lime Prime are supposed to be good for getting out swirl marks, but I think it's a long process and they only come out after time - not instantly.

I use sonus der wunder drying towels there great as for swirl marks Swiss vax cleaner fluid then lime primelite should get rid of most of them failing that try a couple of coats of ag srp ask Taylor tho she knows all!

I tend to just keep wetting the car as I wash it, ie wash the roof then hose off then wash windows hosing down and re wetting the roof then carry on washing & hosing down from the roof down until finally the car is washed and rinsed then I use a microfibre to dry, starting again at the top but as quick as possible, this tends to avoid marks.

My dad use's something he calls a resin filter (i think thats it). The water from the hoes goes in, and then out comes water that when sprayed on the car and left to dry. No water marks. Its in like a big canister lol. Li you will have to come round somewhen and give spencer a good clean and a good wax with my dads wax.

My dad use's something he calls a resin filter (i think thats it). The water from the hoes goes in, and then out comes water that when sprayed on the car and left to dry. No water marks. Its in like a big canister lol. Li you will have to come round somewhen and give spencer a good clean and a good wax with my dads wax.

Li, you're from our neck of the woods, the problem is that we have pretty hard water on the south coast.

A Bit of background on the watermarks, it's a long answer so stay with me:

TDS are the total amount of charged ions, including minerals, salts or metals dissolved in a given volume of water. TDS, which is based on conductivity, is expressed in parts per million (ppm).

For car & window washing, the lower the TDS level the better, a reading of 0-8ppm will give you a fantastic spot free finish (even in direct sunlight, but assuming you've not let the shampoo sit on the car), 8-15ppm very light spotting possible, 15-25ppm light spotting likely. - Our standard water in Fair Oak comes in at circa 260ppm - this essentially means g'teed watermarks!

Moving swiftly along...lol

I tested our tap water today & the TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) reading came out at 265ppm (parts per million), however connected to my DI Resin Filter it came in at 2ppm (the filters a year old & used for washing & rinsing the cars).

Essentially this means that using the water straight from your tap, even if you tried to dry immediately WILL leave water marks & spotting as some of the droplets dry in the sunshine.

There are ways to reduce this, a couple are:

a) Megs Last Touch - used as a drying aidb) Use a DI Filter

I've tried both & found that the DI filters are best, but they do represent an investment of circa £100 for a refillable one...

Flash had a portable cartridge based unit for sale some time ago, this was my first foray into the DI Resin filter market, although in all honesty I didn't know it at the time. The beauty of the Flash unit was that you can connect it to a standard hose (NOT pressure washer) & the filters last (UPTO) 10 rinses...although the best I managed was about 8...

The Flash product isn't the best out there, but it is pretty good & VERY easy to use

On Ebay they go for about £15 delivered for the sprayer & circa £7.50 per 10 wash cartridge. If you're interested I have a boxed new sprayer & 3 x 10 wash cartridges that you can have for £30.

As for the swirls...

Without doubt, no matter how careful you are cleaning your pride & joy you WILL get swirls, alright, some will get it worse than others as we can't all afford the most costly of cloths & utilise the two-bucket-method EVERY time... Real life gets in the way sometimes & let's face it, most of us would rather be driving the car than washing it...MOST of us...lol

I have swirls & my car's less than a year, heck it even came from the dealers with swirls...now there are ways to get rid, but they take time & WILL come back...

So, again a couple of options:

a) Products such as Swissvax Cleaner Fluid Medium, Hard or Pro & others like Megs...many brands have products that can be used by hand, but they take time & elbow grease...

b) Have them buffed out by machine...not really for beginners & can be costly for pads, polish/compound & of course machine...

Option b is the route I tend to use, but you need to be very careful & not do it often...in-fact I'm yet to attack the Camden, but will do over the summer.

Just to show you, here's a shot of the wife's car that we'd had (BRAND NEW) after she drove it through a swirl 'a' matic carwash

She scratched EVERY panel!!!

Here's the final panel shot after spending some time buffing & refining...

It was tough & took a long time to fix the whole car as it was a Toyota Land Cruiser!!! But, it was worth the effort as you can see in the reflection shot...

Ways to minimise swirls:

Good MF clothsRemove Tags (where possible)2BM (Rinse & Wash, with grit guards)Try not to use sponges much (grit gets caught in the open pores & drags them across the paint)etcetc

Probably BORED you to death, but there are products out there to help...

Last edited by nortonski_snr on 5th June 2010, 00:39; edited 2 times in total